If you’re looking for an adorable and super easy Easter treat, our Mini Easter Basket Cakes are perfect. The bottom is a store-bought treat, so all you’re doing is decorating the top.
For more ways to make this the best holiday, check out all of our Easter posts.
If you’re looking for the perfect Easter dessert, these Mini Easter Basket Cakes are it. They’re super simple to make because the bottom is a store-bought Little Debbie Easter basket cake. So, really, all you’re doing is decorating these. You’re not actually baking anything.
If you want, of course you can use homemade cupcakes as the base of these mini cakes. That’s just a little more effort than the Easter bunny might have this time of year.
Just a quick note. If you do use homemade cupcakes, you want to cool cupcakes to room temperature before you try to decorate them. The frosting can melt if your cupcakes are too warm when you try to decorate them and then your candy will slide off.
These edible Easter baskets isn’t the only fun activity we have to celebrate the holiday. For more ideas, check out our list of Easy Easter Crafts. There are tutorials for Washi Tape Easter Eggs, Scrap Wood Easter Bunnies, and more.
Mini Easter Basket Cakes Recipe
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Mini Easter Basket Cakes Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup of coconut flakes
- 4 drops green food coloring
- 2/3 can cream cheese frosting
- 10 Little Debbie Easter Basket Cakes
- 10 SweeTarts Ropes (in Twisted Rainbow Punch)
- 40 classic jelly beans
How To Make Mini Easter Basket Cakes:
Put the sweetened coconut flakes into a bowl.
Add in two drops of green food coloring.
Gently stir the coconut until it’s colored green. You want to do this gently so that you evenly disperse the green coloring throughout all the coconut. Set it aside.
Add the cream cheese frosting into a large bowl.
Add two drops of green food coloring to it and use a spoon to stir until the color is even.
Use an electric mixer on low speed to mix the frosting for two to three minutes. Increase to medium speed for an additional two minutes. This will give a fluffier texture to the store-bought frosting and make it taste more like homemade.
Add the green frosting to a piping bag with a 1M tip (which is a large open star tip) on the end.
Unwrap the Little Debbie Easter Basket cakes and frost cupcakes with a flat, single layer of frosting on top.
Side note: If you don’t have a piping bag or piping tips, you can use an icing knife to add the frosting. It won’t sit as perfectly flat as it would if you piped the icing, but, since you’re covering the frosting anyway, you don’t need the pretty pattern the piping tip leaves.
Dip the frosting side of the cupcake into the green coconut grass. Make sure to coat the sides and the top of the frosting completely in the green coconut.
Side note: If someone coming to your Easter gathering is allergic to coconut, you can dip the top of the cupcake into green sugar sprinkles instead. Or, if you still want the top to look like grass, you can purchase green edible grass instead.
Take one end of the candy rope and stick in down into the cupcake. Fold the candy rope into a U shape and stick the other end down into the cupcake to make the handle of the Easter basket.
Add four jelly beans between the candy rope.
Set it aside and continue on until you’re done with all the tiny cakes.
All we added to our baskets were jelly beans, but keep in mind these are meant to be baskets. So if you have mini foiled-wrapped chocolate bunnies or egg-shaped candies, you can add those as well. Make them your own. Be creative.
Mini Easter Basket Cakes: Frequently Asked Questions
We don’t recommend fully making these ahead of time. If you wanted, you could decorate with the frosting, coconut, and jelly beans ahead of time, but stop there.
Don’t put the candy rope handle on the Easter cupcakes until you’re ready to serve. The candy is used to lying flat, so if it’s in the cupcake too long, it’s going to try and do that — and will potentially rip through the sides of the mini cake, ruining your creation.
If you have leftover decorated cakes after Easter is over, remove the candy basket handles and wipe the excess cake and frosting off their tips and store those in a ziptop bag.
Then, put the cakes in an airtight container. Store them in the fridge for three to four days.
I love the SweeTarts Rope in twisted rainbow punch because the different colors all twisted together really feel like Easter.
If you can’t find them, you can use string licorice instead. When you’re in the store, though, just sort of feel them in the bag. You don’t want them to be super thick or very inflexible.
Just make sure that whatever you’re using is edible. Yes, a pipe cleaner can flex into the shape of a handle, but that’s not food safe and would make your yummy cupcakes inedible — which would really mean you just wasted all of your time making these for nothing.
I like cream cheese frosting because it’s less sweet than vanilla frosting. Since you’re adding sweetened coconut flakes and candy onto this, it can be cloyingly sweet if your frosting is too sweet. But, if you prefer vanilla or buttercream frosting, go with that.
You just can’t use chocolate frosting in these because you need to dye the coconut green to look like the Easter grass that you put in Easter baskets and you can’t dye chocolate frosting.
The cakes we used in this recipe are Little Debbie Easter Basket Cakes because, well, Easter basket is in the name. But, if you can’t find those in your store or you prefer another mini packaged cake, you can go ahead and use that.
And, like we mentioned above, if you have a favorite recipe that you go to for cupcakes, you can use homemade cupcakes in this. Just make sure that your homemade cupcakes rise above the cupcake liners enough that you have room to decorate on top.
More Easter Desserts:
If you want to make some Easter candy for your holiday table, check out our Homemade Peanut Butter Chocolate Eggs and our Chocolate Smash Eggs.
Mini Easter Basket Cakes
If you’re looking for an adorable and super easy Easter treat, our Mini Easter Basket Cakes are perfect. The bottom is a store-bought treat, so all you’re doing is decorating the top.
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup of coconut flakes
- 4 drops green food coloring
- 2/3 can cream cheese frosting
- 10 Little Debbie Easter Basket Cakes
- 10 SweeTarts Ropes (in Twisted Rainbow Punch)
- 40 classic jelly beans
Instructions
- Put the sweetened coconut flakes into a bowl.
- Add in two drops of green food coloring.
- Gently stir the coconut until it’s colored green. You want to do this gently so that you evenly disperse the green coloring throughout all the coconut. Set it aside.
- Add the cream cheese frosting into a large bowl.
- Add two drops of green food coloring to it and use a spoon to stir until the color is even.
- Use an electric mixer on low speed to mix the frosting for two to three minutes. Increase to medium speed for an additional two minutes.
- Add the green frosting to a piping bag with a 1M tip (which is a large open star tip) on the end.
- Unwrap the Little Debbie Easter Basket cakes and frost cupcakes with a flat, single layer of frosting on top.
- Dip the frosting side of the cupcake into the green coconut grass. Make sure to coat the sides and the top of the frosting completely in the green coconut.
- Take one end of the candy rope and stick in down into the cupcake. Fold the candy rope into a U shape and stick the other end down into the cupcake to make the handle of the Easter basket.
- Add four jelly beans between the candy rope.
Nutrition Information
Yield
10Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 73Total Fat 3gSaturated Fat 2gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 1gCholesterol 5mgSodium 39mgCarbohydrates 12gFiber 1gSugar 9gProtein 0g
Would you make these Mini Easter Basket Cakes? Let us know in the comments.
Andrea
Wednesday 26th of April 2023
these mini easter basket cakes are so cute! love them for the holidays!
nancy
Monday 24th of April 2023
cute mini easter eggs basket to make with kids